“Who are you?” he asked.
He heard a rustle of movement, coming from inside the living room, and then he saw a figure, dressed in white, moving toward him. She stepped into a shaft of moonlight that filtered in from the windows that faced the sea. Small, with long blond hair and a round, pale face, he could not make her features out in the dim light.
“I am Princess Annick, formerly of the lower dungeon. Lately of the palace proper.”
Something echoed inside of him.
“Annick,” he repeated.
He knew the name Annick. Princess Annick.
“Who sent you?”
“I sent me,” she said. “A perk, I suppose, of being free. And I am free.” She made a small sound that might’ve been a laugh. “Peculiar, that. I am not accustomed to it.”
“You’re the Princess of Aillette, correct?” He knew.
He didn’t need her to confirm. He’d taken an assignment there only a year ago. That meant he’d learned the history of the country and he would not forget it. He took his work seriously, and that meant he didn’t go in and perform the task unless he was quite clear on what was being done.
As far as the US government was concerned, there was no Maximus King enlisted in their ranks. His work, and any trail that could be traced back to him, was so coded it would take a mastermind to track him down.
Granted, he had always known it was possible. Hence the bulletproof glass.
But he still could not quite figure out how this woman was here, now, and with full knowledge of both his lives.
“Oui,”she said. “It is me.”
“I have already done a service for your country, Annick. I’m not certain why you are here.”
“Oh, it is in regard to that service, Mr. King.”
“I don’t do follow-up visits.”
“Ah, but you see, you have created a problem.”
“Removing dictators from power is the solution. Not the problem.”
“What of the vacuum that is left behind?”
“Not my responsibility.”
“Eh,” she said. “Then what is?”
“Just as I said. I receive orders from military intelligence. I gather a team, or simply myself, depending on the situation. I carry out orders. I leave. I assume that the government sends a crew in after to handle the rest.”
“Ha! Lip service at best,” she said. “Three months of transitional assistance and then what? Gone. I am left with few resources, and little path to rule a country that still scarcely believes I am mentally well enough to rule. Though I believe I have been perfectly wonderful in the year since I have begun to rule.”
“You claim to have few resources, and yet here you are.”
“I am very sneaky,” she said. “And that comes from many years of imprisonment and secret plotting for how I might make amends when I was released.”
“Were you not complicit in the regime?”
“I was certainly not. As I said, I was primarily ensconced in the lower dungeon. I was trotted out as a figurehead on rare occasions. Proof of life and all. And I confess, if I have one weakness it is that I do care a bit for my life. I did not wish to be dead.”
“A common wish,” he said.
“Quite.”